The excellent video above is by long-time activist and photojournalist Kenny Snodgrass. He is the official videographer for Voice of Detroit, but also publishes independently on his YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/KennySnod.

Some of the dozens of people who turned out for the rally July 20, 2018. Videographer Kenny Snodgrass is at left; more had left shortly before photo was taken.

DETROIT – “Free those juvenile prisoners that you’re holding captive, Kym Worthy, free those that are wrongly convicted, Kym Worthy, free those that have been falsified by police officers and falsified evidence, Kym Worthy, free those that are wrongly convicted, America: 2.9 million, that’s insanity!” Marilyn Jordan cried out during a people’s rally at the Frank Murphy Hall July 20.

Marilyn Jordan marches for her son June 17, 2011.

Jordan, whose son Kelly Nobles is serving life without parole, is president of the Detroit People’s Task Force, Inc. (DPTF), founded in 2009 by prisoners and their families in the wake of the Detroit crime lab shutdown. At least 147 people are serving time in Michigan prisons based on falsified results from that lab.

The rally picked up force as other groups and individuals joined to speak out against what they said is a “prison nation” that endangers Black youth in particular.

They included the national “Feet to Fire” campaign which is organizing against murders by police, the BYP 100 which is a national youth group between the ages of 18-35 organizing to end mass incarceration and prisons, period, and many individuals who have fallen victim to the criminal injustice system.

BYP100 members led the crowd in various chants, including, “Stop the New Jim Crow, mass incarceration, police brutality, the whole damn system, shut it down! Stop the cops and fund Black futures.”

Among advocates attending the rally was 25-year-old Jessica Lee, the girl friend of Thelonious “Shawn” Searcy, whose story VOD broke two years ago, recounting his 14-year struggle to overturn his false conviction for the murder of Jamal Segars outside Detroit City Airport on Sept. 4, 2004. Searcy’s is one of the 147 cases where falsified crime lab results landed people in prison.

Thelonious Searcy, in fight for his life.

Searcy filed a pro se motion for a new trial in July 2016, after self-confessed hit man Vincent Smothers came forward to say he, not Searcy, had murdered Segars.

Smothers sent written affidavits confessing to the crime to numerous law enforcement and media sources for several years, while Searcy was busy researching falsehoods in his homicide file and court transcripts. His trial judge, Wayne County’s Presiding Criminal Court Judge Timothy Kenny, finally granted an evidentiary hearing in August, 2017. It lasted from Jan. 2018 through June 29.

Smothers took the stand and gave a thorough account of the Segars murder corroborated by ballistics evidence and other witnesses and events at the scene.

Searcy earlier discovered that crime lab technicians mislabeled a .40 caliber bullet taken from Segars’ body by the medical examiner. AP Patrick Muscat and later AP Timothy Chambers falsely contended that the murder weapon was a .45 caliber gun seized from Searcy’s grandmother’s home. During the trial, the prosecution deliberately lied to jurors, telling them that the bullets in Segars’ body could not be identified. Chambers retired with unexplained timing before the evidentiary hearing ended.

Searcy is still waiting for a ruling from Judge Kenny. (See previous stories on the Searcy case in “Related Stories” below.)

Below, Thelonious ‘Shawn’ Searcy’s girlfriend Jessica Lee, 25, who attended the rally with her two children, spoke out on his behalf during the rally.

Reporter-advocate Diane Bukowski also spoke on behalf of Michigan’s 247 juvenile lifers, still being held captive in Michigan prisons, many for decades, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Miller v. Alabama (2012) and Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016). The high court declared “juvenile life without parole” unconstitutional, and said “only the rarest” child should be sentenced to die in prison.

But Michigan’s county prosecutors, including Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, as well as the Michigan Supreme Court in its June 20t Hyatt/Skinner ruling have ignored the U.S. Supreme Court’s dictates.

Bukowski recounted the case of juvenile lifer Charles ‘K.K.’ Lewis, who has been wrongfully imprisoned for 42 years since the age of 17, accused of the murder of an off-duty police officer in 1976, although all eyewitnesses including the officer’s own partner identified a completely different perpetrator, not Lewis. They testified they saw the real killer shotgun the officer from a white Lincoln Mark Iv.

Then Sgt. Gil Hill, who has been revealed as a corrupt cop with gangland and drug connections, interviewed the driver and released him without even a gunshot residue test.

Lewis and his family have undergone a grueling series of “re-sentencing” hearings in front of Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Qiana Lillard for nearly three years.

During the hearings, officials from the Wayne County Clerk’s office have testified that Lewis’ official court file is ‘lost,’ and that his Register of Actions has been wiped clean from 1976 through 1999. Lewis, a skilled ‘jail-house lawyer,” says court precedents indicate his case should therefore be dismissed.

Lewis’ next hearing is Fri. Aug. 3 at 9 a.m. in Judge Lillard’s courtroom #502. He is expecting that the judge will hear a series of motions he filed pro se, to dismiss his case due to actual innocence, ineffective assistance of trial counsel, the failure of the prosecutor to specify reasons for asking for LWOP again, and others. Judge Timothy Kenny appointed a defense attorney in the case, Sanford Schulman, after the motions were filed. But Schulman pledged during a hearing June 19 that he would preserve and argue Lewis’ motions. He saw the demonstration July 20 on his way into the courthouse.

In video above, father of Ethan Carter, currently being held on $1 million bond by Warren police on false murder charges, says his son was racially profiled and arrested after getting his hair cut in Warren before returning to Detroit for his high school graduation. He has been held for over a month and a half.

McNair’s daughter Adaisha Miller was shot to death in 2012 by Detroit police officer Isaac Parrish, while he danced with her at a party in his house where alcohol was served. Parish, who carried his S&W .40 caliber gun at his side in his holster, claimed it accidentally discharged, but Miller died from a gunshot wound directly to the chest. He has never been charged; his blood alcohol level was never tested.

Kimoni Davis and 2 year old son.

Adaisha Miller died a day before turning 25.

At the right in the video above is Kimberly Griffin, whose son Kimoni “Kodak” Davis, 19, along with his friend Airshaawn Warren, 17, died in 2015 during a high-speed chase by a white cop from Hanging Rock, Ohio, Damon Caruso. Caruso, who had been involved in four such chases earlier, was pursuing Davis for going 11 mph over the speed limit on an Ohio freeway. Small towns in Ohio are known for taking drivers into custody for traffic violations until they pay their tickets.

The rally concluded at 11 a.m, with Marilyn Jordan announcing they will hold more and larger gatherings in the future. Balloons representing the lives of the wrongfully convicted and those killed by police were released into the sky, floating upward past the offices of Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.

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